Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the country I lived in.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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The republic of Paris will endeavor, indeed, to complete the debauchery of the army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of continuing its despotism.
The person whom they persevere in calling king has not power left to him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this collection of republics.
They will not bear that this one body should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
A government of five hundred country attorneys and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality who…
It is wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions.
The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.
In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
You do not imagine that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names and titles.
But in asserting that anything is honorable, we imply some distinction in its favor.
Still as you rise, the state, exalted too, Finds no distemper whilst 't is changed by you; Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.
Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious: a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a tendency in all that is done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the state?
Does not something like this now appear in France?
To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that the majority of the third estate, in conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of the nobility, would…
This preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers État, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.
They, too, could hardly be the most conscientious of their kind, who, presuming upon their incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust which led them from their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of…
Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on them.
Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shall conform to their designs.
That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it.
The power, however, of the House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority of your National Assembly.
God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession which is another priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice!
But supposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House of Commons should be composed in the same manner with the Tiers État in France,--would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror?
If, what is the more likely event, instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes, in…
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank, some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found.
In that light, the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect.
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